A Pressed Poem is a poetic response to a news story which grabs my attention and makes me want to preserve it like a pressed flower.
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” Genesis 26
A fox was brutally murdered
in broad daylight.
The perpetrators, caught
on security cameras, are now
serving a prison sentence.
In a savage attack, the fox was
disembowelled, his heart and kidneys
ripped from his torso.
Blood flooded the grout lines of
the private patio, like lava, as
red jackets, goaded the hounds
from their horses and quad bikes.
Onlookers watched in shocked horror
“Poor sod didn’t stand a chance!” Said resident,
Mr Robin Red-Breast.
“He was just trying to make a living.” Echoed
the pigeons and doves.
The resident humans, worried about how
it would upset the children.
“This might scar them for life!”
“The corpse was stuffed
into the hunter’s jacket, like it
was a rag doll.”
The family of the fox were too distraught
to be interviewed
but released a statement to the press.
“You kill us for sport, for your entertainment. spouting off about tradition, management,
entitlement. The big man who has walked on the moon but can’t stash his own livestock
away from harm.
Lose the horses and the hounds. Lose the jodhpurs and the leather boots.
Lose the thick coats, the blood curdling horn.
Lose the whip!
Lose the Terrier men who come in the night, to block up our homes.
Lose the torches and your mobile phones. Leave your man-made religions at home.
Run barefooted by the light of the moon. Feel your naked heart beat as you crawl
through dog-rose and bramble. Rouse your sedated senses and let them leap and
tingle.
Dive into Mother Earth like a flame and taste the stuff of stars, as you dream of ancestors,
caught between fire and ice.
Marvel at the beauty of moths, of moonbeams on water as you slake your thirst in a stream swimming with iridescence.
Remember the cruelty of Romans and the bloody sports of kings.
Remember the hunger of keen winters, living hand to mouth.
Ancient burial grounds, fenced off like lines of cocaine.
Your addictions have made paupers of us all!”
This poem is based on a crime, reported in the local Norfolk, UK, news on 24th February, 2022. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9emjxpj133o